Susan Mernit: Oakland, tech, health, wine, writing

Latest in: inspiration

I’d been waiting for this for a week or more, ever since I saw Steve had stopped posting on social media and was in hospice care after a long and hard-fought illness. Steve was a colleague, more than a friend, and someone, honestly, I’d had conflict with at one point,( for reasons that make no… Continue Reading

Since the news that Donald Trump has been elected the 54th President of the United States, I’ve been moving between anger, denial and resistance. It seems hard to believe that 54% of the women in the US—mostly college-educated, white women, to be specific—chose to vote for a man who is inexperienced in government, uneducated, a… Continue Reading

When it comes to fitness and health, I have to live with the fact I am much more in the slow and steady time-frame than the make big changes happen quickly camp. In 18 months of effort, I’ve probably failed to meet 50% of my health and fitness goals—I am not down 60 lbs, I… Continue Reading

Last week’s first Tech Inclusion Conference, put on by Wayne Sutton and Melinda Epler with the support of Galvanize and lots of sponsors and funders, was one of those events that people will look back on in a few years and say, “You were there?” The conference not only set a new bar for a… Continue Reading

I’ve been working out for over a year, and the results have been great– I’ve lost 8 inches off my hips, 7 inches off my waist, added muscle, toning, endurance. I sleep better, have fewer health problems and walk around in a great mood. But… I am still 30-50 lbs overweight, depending on how you… Continue Reading

At the gym this morning, I saw that I’ve taken off 8 inches on my hips since February 2014. Since January 2014, I’ve also reduced my body fat by 9%, and lost at least one pants size. But the reality is I have a lot more I want/need to do. This year, I want to… Continue Reading

2014 turned out to be a beautiful raging comet of a dreams come true, new dreams come to life, and some pretty damn good realities. So many positive things happened, it seems like a miracle, really. The year started off with a three-week sabbatical in Spain with my son and his fiancee. We had a… Continue Reading

I started working out regularly back in February 2014. It’s been exactly 6 months since I started and I want to update on where I am with it right now. When I started I was 35-50 lbs overweight, and hadn’t been exercising regularly for about 18 months, though before that–until I sprained my ankle–I had… Continue Reading

About a month ago, I tried a workout called Tabata that totally kicked my ass. It was intense and challenging and I loved it–but the sessions at the YMCA were at 6 am. I get up early, but that was too early, so more tabata class did not happen. Here’s a basic explanation of tabata:… Continue Reading

It was 2003 and I’d moved back to the Bay after being laid off from a giant dot.com and deciding I just couldn’t work in that system anymore. Instead, I was a bicoastal tech consultant, explaining blogging, RSS feeds, content management systems, semantic data, tagging and all the social media I was fascinated by to… Continue Reading